When we abandoned the gold standard, we lost more than money, we lost weight. Aredhall argues that value must be restored in our money, our work, and our dignity.
When we abandoned the gold standard, we lost more than money, we lost weight. Aredhall argues that value must be restored in our money, our work, and our dignity.
Against the endless printing of meaning and money.
We print money to fix problems caused by too much money. Then we wonder why nothing ever feels solid. I keep a gold coin in my desk drawer. It’s small, heavy, and really hard to copy & paste into infinity.
Every time I pick it up I remember 1971, when the last tether snapped and value became whatever the money printers said it was. Since then the game has been rigged against anyone who works with their hands or their head. You wake up, fight traffic, sit in a box, fight traffic again, hand over half your check for a room or house you barely see, then watch the rest disappear into groceries that cost more every month.
Tomorrow you start over. And somehow the scoreboard never moves.
Aredhall is the ace card we want to slide into that deck.
Here’s the rule, short enough to fit on a matchbook: Work earns life, not money. Forty hours a week, either building, planting, coding, welding, or teaching; buys you a roof over your head, a plate that's always full, and a seat at the table.
No rent.
No grocery bill.
No landlord, no bank, no algorithm deciding what your time is worth.
We run it through a non-profit land trust (or the like)
Every acre, every hammer, every line of code is owned by the trust, not by you or me.
That means the tax man can’t touch it, the market can’t flip it, and your great-grandkids will still have a place to stand. Start-up fuel comes from donations, from people who see the rot and want to strike back in some way. Later the trust spins up businesses: a lumber mill, a software shop, a cannery, whatever the members are best at. Profits don’t vanish into offshore accounts; they buy the next farm, the next server rack, the next village green.
We can build on a system like Maslow’s, bottom up. First layer: air, water, food, sleep, shelter, all covered. Second layer: a locked gate, a stocked pantry, neighbors who show up when the power goes out. Only then do we climb. Love shows up when you’re not scared of the 15th. Esteem arrives when the wall you raised is still standing in ten years.
Self-actualization? That’s the kid who grew up here launching her own company and gifting us ten percent so the ladder keeps growing behind her.
This isn’t a commune. It’s a parallel civilization, quiet, cellular, impossible to kill with one raid or one law. One house in Ohio, one barn in Montana, one warehouse loft in Austin. Each owned by the same trust (or whatever we end up creating with the lawyers), each running the same rule: work earns life.
Cut off one node and two more bloom. We don’t promise happiness. We hope to teach satisfaction; the deep kind that settles in your bones when you walk past a building you helped raise and know it will outlast you.
If you’re tired of running in place, come sit with us. Bring calluses or code, doesn’t matter. Bring the willingness to stay still long enough to build something that stays put. The printers are still running. We’re busy pouring concrete.
We treat life like a game, “just start over tomorrow.” But tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. Seriousness is how we reclaim agency, focus, and meaning in a world that’s forgotten how.
Trying to build a website without much coding experience feels a bit like wiring a house with the lights off. There’s trial, error, and the occasional spark, but that’s the point. Aredhall is being built in the open, one imperfect step at a time.
